Starplex

Rissa looked at her. “Yes?”

“For offenses committed in my youth, I have been assessed a penalty of one-sixteenth of my lifespan. I am to be ended next week.”

Rissa looked at her, unsure what to say. Finally, she settled for simply repeating the word “ended,” as if perhaps it, too, had been mistranslated.

“That is correct, good Rissa.”

She was quiet again for a moment. “What crime did you commit?”

“It shames me to discuss it,” said Boxcar.

Rissa said nothing, waiting to see if the Ib would go on. She did not.

“I’ve shared a lot of intimate information about myself and my marriage with you,” said Rissa lightly. “I’m your friend, Boxcar.”

More silence; perhaps the Ib was wrestling with her own feelings. And then: “When I was a tertiary novice—a position somewhat similar to what you call a graduate student—I reported incorrectly the results of an experiment I was conducting.”

Rissa’s eyebrows rose again. “We all make mistakes, Boxcar. I can’t believe they’d punish you this severely for that.”

Boxcar’s lights rippled in random patterns. Apparently, they were just signs of consternation; again, PHANTOM provided no verbal translation. Then: “The results were not accidentally misreported.” The Ib’s mantle was dark for several seconds. “I deliberately falsified the data.”

Rissa tried to keep her expression neutral. “Oh.”

“I did not think the experiment was of great significance, and I knew—thought I knew, anyway—what the results should be. In retrospect, I realize I only knew what I wanted them to be.” Darkness; a pause. “In any event, other researchers relied upon my results. Much time was wasted.”

“And for this they’re going to execute you?”

All the lights on Boxcar’s web came on at once—an expression of absolute shock. “It is not a summary execution, Rissa. There are only two capital crimes on Flatland: pod murder and forming a gestalt with more than seven components. My lifespan has simply been shortened.”

“But—but if you’re six hundred and five now, how long ago did you commit this crime?”

“I did it when I was twenty-four.”

“PHANTOM, what Earth year would that have been?”

“A.D. 1513, ma’am.”

“Good God!” said Rissa. “Boxcar, surely they can’t punish you for a minor offense committed that long ago.”

“The passage of time has not changed the impact of what I did.”

“But so long as you’re aboard Starplex, you’re protected by the Commonwealth Charter. You could claim asylum here. We could get you a lawyer.”

“Rissa, your concern touches me. But I am prepared to pay my debt.”

“But it was so long ago. Maybe they’ve forgotten.”

“Ibs cannot forget; you know that. Because matrices form in our pod brains at a constant rate, we all have eidetic memories. But even if my compatriots could forget, it would not matter. I am honor bound in this.”

“Why didn’t you say anything about this earlier?”

“My punishment did not require public acknowledgment; I was allowed to live without constant shame. But the terms under which I work here require me to give you five days’ notice if I intend to leave. And so now, for the first time in five hundred and eighty-one years, I am telling someone of my crime.” The Ib paused. “If it is acceptable, I will use the remaining days of my life putting our research in order so that you and others may continue it without difficulty.”

Rissa’s head was swimming. “Um, yes,” she said at last. “Yes, that would be fine.”

“Thank you,” said Boxcar. She turned and started to roll toward the door, but then her web flashed once more. “You have been a good friend, Rissa.”

And then the door slid open, Boxcar rolled away, and Rissa slumped back in her chair, dumbfounded.

Chapter XII

Rissa came to the bridge, wanting to talk to Keith about Boxcar’s announcement. But just as she was striding toward his workstation, Rhombus spoke up. “Keith, Jag, Rissa,” he said, in his crisp, cool translated voice, “innumerable apologies for the interruption, but I think you should see this.”

“What is it?” said Keith.

Rissa took a seat as Rhombus’s ropes tickled his console. A section of the holo bubble became framed off in blue. “I wasn’t paying enough attention to the real-time scans, I’m afraid,” said the Ib, “but I’ve been reviewing the data we’ve been recording, and—well, watch this. This is a playback speeded up one thousand times. What you’re going to see in the next six minutes took almost all of the time we’ve been here to occur.”

In the framed-off area was a dark-matter sphere, seen from almost directly above its equator. Actually, it wasn’t anywhere near a perfect sphere: this one was flattened at the poles. Light and dark latitudinal cloud bands crossed its face. According to the scale bars, this was one of the largest spheres they’d found, measuring 172,000 kilometers in diameter.

“Wait a minute,” said Keith. “It’s got cloud bands, yet it doesn’t seem to be spinning at all.”